Branding Your Medical Practice: How to Make Your Practice Distinctive and Unique

Abstract

It was not so long ago that the concept of branding referred to using a hot iron to make your cattle look different from all other cattle on the range so that you could distinguish your cattle from others. Today, in the business world, branding is used to create the perception that a product or service is superior to other business in the community, the region, and even the nation. Is your medical practice unique and special? Everyone believes that we are members of truly unique practice or organization but how do we convey that to our existing patients and to potential new patients? Branding is an opportunity to create a name, a term, a symbol, or design that identifies and defines your practice and will differentiate your practice from other practices. This chapter will define branding from a medical practice point of view and discuss the importance of branding a medical practice using inexpensive and ethical methods of branding for the contemporary medical practice.